Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Draco (Dra)  ·  Contains:  NGC 4250
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NGC 4250, Gary Imm
NGC 4250, Gary Imm

NGC 4250

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NGC 4250, Gary Imm
NGC 4250, Gary Imm

NGC 4250

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Description

This faint lenticular galaxy is located 90 million light years away in the constellation of Draco at a declination of +71 degrees.  It is a magnitude 13 galaxy which spans 3.4 arc-minutes in our apparent view.  This corresponds to a diameter of 90,000 light years.  

I see 6 interesting parts to this galaxy:
1.  The central yellow core.
2. The small round white circular lens around the core, with some apparent faint dust lanes.
3.  The long bar across the center, slightly curved at each end.
4.  The oval ring around the mid-region
5. The faint circular outer ring.
6.  The interesting non-stellar object at 10 o'clock in the outer disk.  Is this a distant galaxy or a local dwarf companion?  I don't see much disturbance nearby, so my guess is that it is a distant galaxy.

One interesting question - why is the small inner lens and the large outer ring both circular, yet the mid-region ring is an oval?   I think that we are looking at the galaxy near face-on, so most features would naturally appear circular. But the long bar is influencing the oval shape of the mid-region ring.  This object appears very similar in this regard to NGC 1291, although that galaxy is much brighter since it is 3x closer.

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